The State of Siege
by Tomyris
Summary: Minister of the Interior Miranda Lawson is forced to use every recourse, to risk her friendships and morality, and stare into the abyss itself, to keep the Galactic Dominion from tearing itself apart as President Tanda Pryl's decisions come to a violent head. She is in power, and the State of Siege is in effect! A novella sequel to Swords of the Motherworld for a definitive ending.
1. Prologue

THE STATE OF SIEGE

In a democratic society, which has long known peace and stability, these powers fall senescent. Flooding rains create a landslide which buries a road and a town. The media fixates on the images of tragedy. The Governor declares the 'State of Emergency', and the town becomes eligible for money from the central government, the deployment of troops, and other measures to recover. Nobody asks where the laws of the State of Emergency came from, what they mean, what they do as a legal mechanism.

They are not some kind of oddly named reference to a request for disaster assistance. They can be used that way, but they are not. They are in fact the tool of the Castellan. They are the ancient principle of Cicero: _Inter arma enim silent leges_. The tool of the Gendarme. They are the device of the prorogued Parliament. They are the Order-in-Council, the Executive Order. The suspension of Habeas Corpus.

They are the body of soldiers standing at the checkpoint in the middle of the night stopping someone from returning to their house without a document check. They are the tanks in front of Parliament. They are the national curfew. They are the mobilisation order for soldiers when there is no war. They are the warning shot in the air cutting through the silence of a peaceful summer day and the summary detention of groups of people found out on the street. They are the nervous clusters of fresh conscripts, smoking on the street corner with fixed bayonets, not quite sure if they are surrounded by enemies and traitors or friends and countrymen, and so not quite sure of how to act.

They are the LAACDocs. They are the suspension of the Senate. And they are the Oversector Grand Moffs, ruling by reference to the authority of His Imperial Majesty and the Rescript of the throne in response to their actions. The crack of the pistol in the night, and the assembled firing squad. They are the civil war, when the army recaptures rebel territory and begins to arrest collaborators. They are the moment when even the lawyers of a democratic society argue "these amendments of the Bill of Rights, in truth, are all peace provisions of the Constitution and, like all other conventional and legislative laws and enactments, are silent amidst arms, and when the safety of the people becomes the supreme law".

They are the 10-80.

They are the 10-81.

They are the _Decreto de Guerra a Muerte_. The band playing _Deguello_ , and the flag of 'Death to Traitors' hoisted before the rebels. They are the moment when the glove falls off the fist of civilisation, and the State takes spasmodic, exceptional actions in the hope that the emergency can be quickly ended, and the peace of civil society quickly restored.

Except sometimes the measures do not work. Sometimes the problems remain. Sometimes the solution remains the same. Try it again. _Try harder._ There are no limits when you are under the State of Siege! If it doesn't work, society itself is doomed...

Minister of the Interior of the Galactic Dominion the Right Honourable Lady Miranda Lawson didn't know what she was going to order under the State of Siege yet. She didn't know how long it was going to last. She didn't know how bad the conspiracy was. She didn't know how great the threat was.

But she sat behind her wonderful rosewood desk with brass fittings at the centre of her office in the old convent of Santo Domingo, and aides continuously brought reports and left again as the holo-projector in front of her updated and a trail of flimsies and padds were deposited and retrieved, the guards ramrod straight in stormtrooper armour outside. Her throat felt dry and half swollen, for no particular apparent reason, and for every reason under the stars.

There had been an attack on the President. On _Tanda_. **On the woman who had saved the galaxy from the Reapers**.

And pursuant to Article 10 Section 81 of the Constitution of the Galactic Dominion, she had signed the Emergency Order, her devolved authority in the event of Presidential incapacity, that initiated The State of Siege. A distant crackle of gunfire echoed through the cool mountain night of Cusco, and the sirens of arriving vehicles howled their two-tone notes to the hazy sky.

The Demigoddess Liberator-President of the Dominion might already be laying dead, shattered at the bottom of a canyon. And whether or not she was, no conspiracy this brazen intended to leave the job only half-finished.

They had to be coming for her next. For her, and for the peace of the galaxy.

Her hand clenched on a pen, and she looked to the clone now known as Avital Shepard. "One moment, Director," she said, and turning back to her desk, calmly signed the national military mobilisation orders while flickering light from the fireplace in the old Spanish colonial convent played a game against the steady white light of the desk lamp, a game of shadows and shades that made her think of the game she had just been forced to start. Oh yes; the game had begun, and only the vicious logic of the State of Siege would give it an end.


	2. Chapter One

Antonio Pérez stood at the east bridge approach with his hands firmly planted on his hips. The lights of a dozen ambulances and three dozen police cars, both ground and hover models, flashed incessantly in a cacophony of colour in the background. He imagined, quite sardonically, that someone in the village would probably be diagnosed with epilepsy when it all settled down as a consequence.

Police work had seemed like a nice challenge after the nightmare of the war, and the vast demobilisation which had seen him turned out of the Peruvian Army with the rank of Major. Now he served in the Dominion Gendarmes, answerable directly to the Interior Ministry, and like most of his comrades he assumed that the primary function of his job was to make sure that law abiding people didn't have to deal with war and insurrection or face the wrath of organised crime.

Well, the war and insurrection had come anyway. Worse, for the most critical part of the rescue operations, he was a bystander. One small woman Lieutenant who had volunteered had inched her way along the shattered main arch to a broken car teetering over the precipice in a fine show of courage. The line she carried was hooked to it, and lashed to multiple tow trucks including the large bus one that had finally shown up, having had its tires slashed by the conspirators, apparently.

An engineer who had rushed over from a nearby village was supervising and he was providing the guard, while Colonel Gutiérrez was taking reports from the search parties in the valley. The cars had been so disfigured by the blast that they were not even sure whether or not the President's had gone off the bridge; there was at least a small chance she was inside of this one, but nobody had been able to look yet.

"All right! The car's over the first pillar!" The Engineer's voice snapped through the darkness with a sharp surety, and it jolted them all into action.

"Med-team, go!" Pérez shouted, and took off jogging up the bridge, the cold air snapping at his lungs. He arrived with the medevac team and two policemen equipped with extraction equipment. They cut the shattered door of the armoured car open immediately... And one of the figures inside of it stirred.

"Your Excellency?"

"The Right Honourable," came the voice. "No stretcher," she snapped a moment later, reaching out with gloved hands to drag herself from the armoured limo. She did, however, take the proferred hand from Major Pérez to help drag herself up, and her side was streaked with blood, her nose twisted at a crooked angle and dripping more.

"Senator Nyroska..." Pérez recognised the woman, a brief chill flaring from the legends which surrounded her. Her face had been smashed, and pushed out of one of the lenses she apparently wore, now removed entirely with the assistance of one of the EMTs, an act that revealed the red eye below it, she shook her head and let them lead her to the curb of the bridge to treat the wound in her side.

"Yes," she confirmed drolly, and looked around, remarkably lucid. "You haven't found the President yet, have you, Her Excellency's car went off the bridge, didn't it?"

"Your's was our last hope, Senator," he answered quietly.

"Don't rule her out yet, she's a force sensitive. Get more teams down into the lower valley! Who's in charge of the search there?"

"Colonel Gutiérrez," he answered, coming to attention like he was a drill cadet being called to account. The woman's voice had that kind of effect...

"Get him over here, Major." Her eyes glinted in the darkness. "On the double!"

Pérez jogged back up the bridge. "Colonel! Colonel sir! The National Security Advisor wants you to report to her immediately."

"Senator Nyroska was recovered from that one car?"

"Yes Sir, and she wants you on the double!"

"Take over here, Major." He took off at once, presenting himself to Nyroska as a chill wind howled through the high desert valley below.

"Senator Nyroska! Colonel Jorge Gutiérrez at your service, Commanding the 10th Peru-Bolivian District Gendarmerie Regiment."

"Colonel," She was now in several mylar blankets, but if anything more alert. "What's the status of the regiment?"

"We've cordoned the area for twenty klicks on the east bank, Your Honour. The Ninth has the west bank under Colonel Saumarez."

"Lucia is a good officer," the woman murmured under her breath, thinking. "What's the legal status you're operating under?"

"The Interior Minister has invoked the 10-81, Your Honour. The entire Dominion is in the exceptional regime of the _Estadio de Sitio_..."

"Minister Lawson is in command in the Capital, Colonel?"

"Yes, that's correct, Senator!"

"Have the perpetrators been located yet?"

"No, Your Honour! Rescue operations..."

"Colonel, contact Colonel Saumarez and coordinate with her an immediate search of the valley for the perpetrators! They certainly used vertical separation to attempt their escape and may be working their way out now. They would not be on the top with the security forces, but a half-klick below us and exfiltrating there. Colonel, I want you to search every home, every hovel, every church and every pigpen in that damned valley and I want it done now, you have the legal authorisation under the 10-81, don't knock, I want doors broken!"

"Your Honour, my chain of command..."

"General Rudiger is too busy securing the capital and Minister Lawson has the entire Dominion to secure. As a special advisor of the President and a member of the cabinet I am ordering you to rip the area apart and find those terrorists, Colonel! And you will get _all_ emergency medical personnel into the valley, _now,_ save those personally attending to me! If the President is alive, she will be at the bottom, having survived with her force powers. Since our assassins are certainly also at the valley floor, the risk to her life is not yet over. Get them down there now, Colonel, or you'll answer for the consequences!"

"Understood, Your Honour!" He snapped a trembling salute and then, spinning on heel, started barking orders in Spanish.

Behind him, Isard lifted a trembling hand with a comm to her lips, adjusting the emergency channel. "Ninth Regiment Headquarters, Ninth Regiment Headquarters... This is a Presidential security line, I am the National Security Advisor. I want to speak to Colonel Saumarez _at once_!"

As she spoke with Colonel Saumarez's headquarters, swallowing against a copper tang of blood in her throat every so often, the night was cut with the sounds of heavy machinery, both on the flanks of the valley and in the valley below. Armoured personnel carriers were moving out under Colonel Gutiérrez's orders already, because he was not that inefficient of an officer. Speeders went racing out to confirm orders.

Lucia Saumarez didn't question her once, just repeated and confirmed the orders, and verified she was already in touch with Colonel Gutiérrez's mobile headquarters trailer to coordinate the operation. She would be taking off shortly in a speeder command post to verify the operation and was mustering more medical resources in anticipation of a positive recovery on the valley floor.

Satisfied, Isard leaned back, scanning the village on her side of the canyon for a moment. The houses would at least be warmer and safer. She pointed to one of the larger, more prosperous ones. "Help me there and get me settled, that's my new headquarters."

"Yes, Your Honour!"

Refusing a stretcher, she walked with one EMT on each side of herself, the house fifty feet from the security trailer Colonel Gutiérrez was operating out of. When they saw her, the security personnel for the convoy escort assembled for instructions.

"Tell the family inside to move out," she ordered, and started forward. They went in first, and then surprised her by ducking back out.

"The mother, she wants to know if she can stay with her daughters, to cook Your Honour food and see to your comfort."

That brought Ysanne Isard up short. She had never heard of such a thing in response to a prospective seizure of a home for quartering troops before. "I... Have they been searched?"

"Yes, Your Honour."

"Then I suppose there is no harm to it. Are all the people around here...?"

"They are enraged at the attack on Her Excellency the President, Your Honour, and eager for revenge."

She was helped inside, and settled into a hand-carved, rough wood chair. The Cholita in the kitchen came out with some heavy dish of chicken and potatoes, and Isard took it gratefully. _The indigenous cuisine of the motherworld of humanity_ , a thought which even now brought a small touch of bemusement to her lips. For the most part, though, she was astonished by the looks of concern and respect on their faces, as the woman assembled with her daughters, bowed politely, and then shuffled off to the kitchen to stay out of the way.

Somehow, the locals were not resisting the imposition. The President was loved so much that even by extension, even by her fearsome reputation, they were ... The locals were in on the hunt. They wanted the terrorists as much as she did. Her mind focused, and she remembered her own words of the past. _The Altiplanan Highlands are essentially the bedrock of regime loyalty on Terra_...

Isard lifted her comm to her mouth again and keyed Colonel Gutiérrez's channel. "Colonel, this is Senator Nyroska. Countermand my order to conduct the searches no-knock. Talk to the people and discuss unusual events with them. We are in loyalist sectors."

"Understood, Your Honour." He sounded relieved.

Isard repeated the instruction to Colonel Saumarez, who also confirmed it, and then turned to her food, musing on how five years ago she might not have even cared to countermand her previous orders, even in a loyalist district, and wondered what had changed, and why she wouldn't have. As she was finishing the food and pushing the introspection into the back of her mind, the distinctive scream of X-wing engines passed overhead. Following them close behind was the sound of an interplanetary shuttle.

"Who's coming in?"

"Tali'Zorah, Your Excellency."

Every muscle in Isard's body tensed. "Get me to my feet!"

As they helped her out of the home, shouts cut the night. "The President, The President! Merciful God, they've found the President!"


	3. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

Ysanne Isard dashed out, heedless of her own wounds, to the cliff-road descending into the valley. There, an ambulance had rolled up. The Public Health Corps personnel were nothing if they were not quick... And Tali'Zorah's speeder had just landed. Overhead, the X-wings were still in the air, providing top cover and escorting down a shuttle from Tali's Venator. Behind the ambulance, the two women met.

"Director." Tali'Zorah was trembling so hard it seemed she was vibrating through her suit.

"M'lady," Ysanne bowed briefly. "I..."

Tali pushed past her as the doors opened and the gurney rolled out. "Ancestors," she almost hissed, staying back as the medical personnel moved her.

Tanda's body seemed broken in every single place, every single bone smashed, the medics having stabilized her into a roughly appropriate form. No longer bent and twisted in odd and unnatural angles, she was, but forced back into the shape of a living human by the efforts of the corpsman.

Nonetheless, Ysanne could read a vitals display well enough, and for all the impulse of shock it might have caused, the quickening of her pulse and flaring of her eyes, she could not say it was entirely unexpected that Tanda Pryl had survived the fall. Ever since she had been touched by the power of the Rakatan, she had done things no regular Captain of the Line could dream of, and as sure as the Emperor might have survived the fall, or even one of his elite acolytes like Sedriss QL or Jerec likely would have, so had Tanda.

The Corpsman in the ambulance looked up, though not to Ysanne. He addressed Tali crisply, as the next of kin and the woman who by force of will would certainly decide all further treatment. "She shouldn't be alive, M'lady, but she is. What are your instructions? We've got to move now."

"My ship. Straight into orbit!" Tali turned toward Ysanne, and the Director thought her expression was almost hesitant, as if she were not sure. She could also, by long experience with Quarians, tell that there were tears under the mask.

"It's fine, M'lady," Ysanne replied smoothly, offering no dissent. "It's safe, secure, and has medical facilities better than any on the ground. Minister Lawson and I will handle the situation here on the surface."

"I... Yes, Miranda will take care of those things." She looked to the Corpsman. "Come on, then! There's no time to waste!" Gesturing, she turned back with her broad Quarian gait toward the shuttle from whence she had just come, the gurney following.

Ysanne watched them go, feeling the wind coming down off the cold mountains, dry enough that it seemed to suck the moisture from one's skin. The thought, mingling with the mixture of awe and envy that came with her witnessing of the powers of the force, reminded her of an incident to the south, and she trembled harder than Tali had. Tasiele Shan. If the Jedi Master was involved in this, then the threat would be dreadfully serious indeed.

Fortunately, there were plenty of suspects, and plenty of opportunities. "Colonel Gutiérrez, get me the Inquisitorate Headquarters!"

"...Your Honour? They have no special powers under a 10-81."

"Unless there's Reaper influence behind the cause of the declaration," she answered with a twisted rictus of a grin. The Colonel blanched. "Do it," she added emphatically.

"Yes, Your Honour!" He saluted and spun away. Nobody even wanted to think about that. Not so soon! Not when 'recovery' from the war was a farce, when the economy sputtered in rounds of stagflation and outright depression and half the population of the galaxy still lived in tents, rubble shacks and prefabs. They needed to heal, and recover from the war, not face another one...

The shuttle's backblast turned the cold wind into an outright tornado, but at least it was warm. Ysanne watched the light of the thrusters disappear into the sky above, and smiled. She knew all the fears that ran through the Colonel's heart, and she knew the cure for them, too.

The State of Siege was the State of Exception, and that was a time of opportunities in equal measure to the risks. And for the forseeable future, Madame President had no say in what would be done in her name, for her defence, and for her revenge.

"Your Honour, the High Justicar, your line!"

Ysanne grinned despite the circumstances and her own lingering pain, raising her omnitool to her lips over the still howling back-drafts of distant wind, and looked down from the shadows of high mountains above. "Avital, it's Ysanne. They've tried to assassinate the President."

"The President, Your Honour?" The skepticism laced in Avital's voice was clear.

Ysanne grinned anyway. She knew what Avital meant, except that now it did not matter. Not in the slightest. And Avital understood that, too. "Yes, Avi. The President. We have to assume Reaper indoctrinates were involved and move Inquisitorious resources into position to support the Minister of the Interior in enforcing the 10-81 immediately."

"Won't that final decision rest with the Viceprex when she reaches Cusco?"

"Come now, Avi, we both know what the Viceprex is going to do."

There was only a moment's pause. "...Understood, Ysanne. I'll get on it."

* * *

"They can't find General Dodonna anywhere?" Miranda resisted the urge to chew on a pen for the third time that morning. At least the cafe con leche was coming hot and fast, considering she'd gotten all of four hours of sleep the night before, if that.

"No ma'am," General Alejandro Falcon y Rudiger stood at rigid attention in the Gendarmerie uniform which better reflected the old traditions of Earth, compared to the Stormtroopers who stood guard outside. It complemented well the cybernetic right eye and his gaunt ethnically German frame that he shared with so many of his native Chileans. "My men searched all the temporary residences of the Senators, he was long gone from his own, of course. If he is not behind the attempt, then he was warned to flee when it was executed."

"Christ." Miranda drowned back another cup convulsively. Her hands were starting to shake from too much. "Of course, General, we both know that this probably wasn't a conspiracy against Tanda. I confirmed that ... Senator Nyroska was in that convoy. And speaking in confidence, she is Ysanne Isard. And Dodonna probably suspected for a long time and it was likely confirmed within the last few months. There are a plethora of suspects."

"Suspects who are desperate, or fools. Or who say that as the first stage of the work," Alejandro answered flatly, starting to pace. He reached for the silver cigarette holder in his breast-pocket, and then stopped. Not in the Minister's officer, alas. "You don't attack the convoy of the President without expecting to be shot for it."

"General, there are plenty of people who might be willing to face a firing squad for the chance to knock off Ysanne Isard," Miranda replied grimly. "Tanda... Her Excellency was trying to make all of the ex-Imperials back into one big happy family in the Dominion. Forgive all crimes, both for and against the rebellion, for the purpose of national reconciliation and state formation. It's manifestly failed and it's plagued her regime from the start. She's virtually the only member of the Galactics—as distinct from the Ovans—who has actually lived up to her own principles. The rest want to continue their Galactic Civil War as if a million lightyears of space and six years of time were but a detail of history which had rudely interrupted the feud."

"A detail which now has the Liberator in a coma and the peace of our entire galaxy threatened, Minister."

"Don't I damned well know it, General..." Miranda sighed and sank into the high back of her chair.

A stormtrooper officer in dress blacks stepped in and saluted, clicking the heels of his boots. "Minister, the Viceprex has arrived at the shuttlepad."

"Major, find a priest willing to administer the oath of office as Acting President and have her sent right to me."

"Yes, Ma'am." He saluted and spun on heel.

Miranda glanced back to General Rudiger. "Alejandro, best for you to step out. When it's time to deliver the Acting President a briefing on the situation in the capitol, I'll ask you back. Feel free to bring your staff officers for that, so I recommend staying around until afterwards before returning to your headquarters. The immediate situation is controlled with the 10-81 fully in effect."

Alejandro Rudiger shook his head in wonderment. "The Viceprex..."

"Enough of that. She'll be your lawful superiour in a few minutes. Dismissed, General."

He shrugged laconically, saluted, and spun on heel as well, striding from the room and out into the courtyard of the grand Spanish colonial building laid down on the bones of older wonders. Outside there was another Stormtrooper officer, a Lieutenant, who had taken up his habit, smoking in the midst of the garden. Startled, he lunged to perfect attention at Rudiger's arrival, but Alejandro just waved him off.

"Come on man, it's been a long enough night. No worries about that. Just give me a light."

Wordlessly, the Lieutenant handed it over, and still in silence, they both watched as a squadron of armoured stormtroopers escorted a figure toward the Minister's office. For all of her imposing appearance, a tall woman muscled enough to look stuffed in her uniform, nobody felt that Lakwii Varrscha was ready for this job.

The good news was that Lakwii Varrscha counted herself among those people, and her consternation warred only with her concern for her mentor as she stepped into Miranda's office, to be confronted in her surprise by a priest who held a copy of that old book which governed the dominant syncretic religion of the capitol region.

"Minister?" She looked across the room with wide eyes, to where Miranda was standing, speaking in Basic instead of English.

"It's part of the oath of office, and I know you Galactics are not particularly religious, so I didn't think that the brand mattered as much of the ceremonial," Miranda replied, her own Basic excellent for the sake of her reputation as a cultured woman if nothing else. "Lakwii, you need to take over as Acting President. Tanda's in a coma. It's the constitution, and you are her chosen protege."

Lakwii turned slowly back to the priest, visibly swallowing. "Well, now's not the time to be making enemies with the supernatural," she muttered, and then switched to Spanish to greet the man as the terrifying weight of the whole Dominion came crashing unexpected down upon her shoulders.

Outside, Ysanne Isard and Avital Shepard were already hastening through the security checks, attache cases in the hands of their aides in tow. Somwhere further out in Cusco, a siren again sounded, a mournful two-tone wail in the cool morning air. A camera crew was being ushered in, and on a thousand planets, people were tuning into the broadcast which under the auspices of the 10-81 displaced all other programming, forcing all attention toward the act of government continuity.


End file.
